The four little children hoped more than anything to see their teachers here, to see other kids, to see everyone doing well.
Unfortunately, even though the daylight had already broken, they hadn’t seen anyone.
“It’s okay.”
The little child held Lele’s hand, encouragingly saying, “The teachers are all very capable. They will definitely come out of the forest. Even if they can’t find us, my family will come to find me.”
At this moment, Savi, exhausted, was in a bad mood. Hearing Ning’s words, he coldly asked without hesitation, “How do you know your family will come to find you? Even if they want to find you, can they locate our whereabouts?”
Savi, with a tense face, felt like he was going crazy.
Ningning looked at the emotionally unstable Savi, furrowed his brows, and said, “I call my family every day. If I didn’t call yesterday, my dad and brother will surely worry about me; they will come to find me!”
Even in this perilous situation, Ningning didn’t think he would die. He had the world’s most loving dad and brother, as well as Uncle Ling Qi, Uncle Lulu, Auntie Ai Wei, and others who loved him dearly. They would definitely come to find him.
The confident tone of the little child, filled with self-assurance, gradually calmed down the originally irritable Savi.
“When I was at home, I used to go out with Uncle and catch Zergs. I could make fire, roast Zergs, and sleep in a hole. You don’t need to be afraid; we will all survive!”
The little child demonstrated his skills, wiped his dirty face, strapped on his backpack, and found a place for everyone to rest temporarily.
Underneath the newly found, dilapidated building, Wagner and Savi quickly fell asleep.
The little child hugged Lele and kept watch.
It was quiet all around.
In this silence, Lele, who hadn’t fallen asleep, suddenly lifted his dirty face. “Dad, Lele has something to tell you.”
“Go ahead.”
Looking at Lele’s equally dirty face, the little child wiped it for him, but the more he wiped, the dirtier it got.
“Dad, Lele’s eyes, Lele’s eyes are green.”
As Lele spoke, his right eye gradually turned into an almost transparent green. The kind of green that made the little child freeze in astonishment.
Lele didn’t need to continue speaking; the chubby little child had already recognized...
This was the color of the Zerg tribe.
“Lele is not a normal child. Mom said Lele has to hide all the time to survive.”
After showing Dad Ningning the color of his eyes, Lele let go of his hand.
His face was full of fear and unease, but his voice deliberately tried to sound strong: “It’s okay if you don’t want Lele. Lele can hide by himself.”
Hide, or be caught by the Zergs. Both were fine.
Lele’s voice was on the verge of tears. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. While waiting for Dad Ningning’s reaction, he intermittently told him everything about himself.
He was hidden by his mother and had never stepped out of the house.
He had never done anything bad, never made friends, and never bullied anyone.
He didn’t want to be a bad little child, and he didn’t want green eyes.
But he couldn’t change the color of his eyes.
The little child listened to Lele, and as he listened, he sniffed and solemnly hugged him.
“There’s no way I wouldn’t want you.”
The chubby little child really detested Zergs, but Lele wasn’t an insect from the Zerg race. His other eye color was inherited from his mother; he was also a human little child.
“Don’t be afraid. Grandpa Zhan Xi is very good at raising little ones. When you come home with me, Grandpa, Uncle, and other uncles will all take good care of you.”
The two little children hugged each other, and Wagner and Savi, who had long been awakened by the noise, also came over to hug Lele after a moment of silence.
“Don’t become a child of the Zerg race. Just be a stupid human child. I’ll teach you to be very smart.” Savi said with a sullen face to Lele.
Wagner touched Lele’s cheek, also very serious. “Lele, you still have a Marshal Grandpa, he’s super awesome. With him around, you don’t need to hide anymore.”
Accepted by them, Lele, looking at the three children in front of him, his eyes filled with tears, nodded vigorously.
The warm moment didn’t last too long.
The ancient Earth ruins, which had not seen any Zergs, suddenly had more and more of them. Lele looked at these insects and told Dad Ningning, “They woke up. They slept for a very, very long time, and now they’ve woken up.”
The Zerg have a dormancy period, but the Zerg outside of this planet didn’t have a long dormancy period, usually lasting between one to two months.
The Zergs here... seemed to have slept for several years.
Once awakened, these Zergs couldn’t burrow back underground.
They were active in the ruins, and several times, they almost wiped out the children in one go.
The children were small and agile, running at the slightest disturbance. Without adult supervision, they managed to get through three days like this.
After three days.
The Winter Camp headquarters, which lost contact with the small Winter Camp unit, was in a state of panic. Ludwig and Twain personally inquired about it.
Meanwhile, the first to discover the little child’s disappearance, Caesar, was currently pinpointing the detailed location of the ancient Earth site and gathering relevant information.
The address provided by the Winter Camp headquarters was only a rough one, not detailed. The second in command of the Winter Camp organization, who was most familiar with the ancient Earth site, was also part of the team heading to the site.
For three days straight, Zhan Xi hadn’t had a proper sleep.
“Xiao Lin, take a look at this!”
Zhan Xi hastily handed a newly obtained document to Huo Lin. In this latest survey data, they discovered a horrifying fact—
This so-called ancient Earth site is indeed an ancient Earth site, no mistake about it.
But living on this site was not the humans from the ancient Earth period; it’s the Zerg that just started appearing in the ancient Earth period!
This Zerg group rarely showed itself; but they had always been here.
Now, the entire winter camp’s disappearance, along with the signal indicating the presence of the Zerg race sent by the winter camp leader, silently conveyed to them what had occurred in the winter camp situated in the territory of the Zerg race.
The Zergs appeared, and teachers and children had been missing for days.
These two incidents combined, Zhan Xi, who had endured three days, was filled with uncontrollable concern: “Xiao Lin, we need to find Ningning quickly.”
He dared not close his eyes now, let alone imagine what his precious child was going through.
The adults were frantically searching for the children, and after three days of survival, each child was so dirty that even their own fathers might not recognize them.
As finding food became increasingly difficult, some children were going hungry for longer periods. In the desperation, they started looking for edible wild plants.
There were some plants by the roadside that looked unremarkable, like wild grass, but they were edible. If they couldn’t be eaten directly, they could be crushed into a paste by smashing them with stones and then consumed.
The little child, who went hungry every day, ate a grassy paste smashed with stones. With difficulty swallowing, tears welling up, he nostalgically recalled the meals made by his father, Zhan Xi.
Sigh.
It turned out that in this world, there were things even more unpalatable than Dad’s cooking.
Lele, who loved vegetables the most, struggled to swallow even the paste.
It’s another late night.
The four little children huddled together no longer exhibited the cute appearance they had when they first arrived at the winter camp. Their stomachs growled, and in their small hands, they clutched freshly found wild vegetables.
The chubby little child sniffled, recalling a StarNet video he had seen before: “It said online that only those in love have to forage for vegetables.”
His childish voice choked up, “Ningning isn’t in love, so why do I have to eat wild vegetables?”
